The present invention relates to a scanning system, a scanned image processing device and a scanned method and, for example, relates to a technique to scan a medium.
There are a considerable number of people who, during reading, add markings with a pen to information contained in a paper book, such as a part that they think is important or have a question about in a text (body), or a drawing.
On the other hand, a marking (highlight) function is provided in electronic books. In electronic books, because the content of a book has been converted into electronic data, the text extracted by a user can be easily stored and searched with use of the highlight function.
For paper books also, there is a need to easily convert a part of a paper book into electronic form and store it, like electronic books. To respond to such a need, Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 2004-30325 discloses a technique that aims at enabling the conversion of data between a paper document and an electronic document with use of an uncomplicated system.
A calendar book system disclosed in Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 2004-303254 is composed of a pen device and a base unit. The pen device includes three optical sensors (CCD arrays). The first optical sensor is mounted on a linear side along the length of the pen device. The second optical sensor is mounted on the pen point of the pen device or one side of the pen point. The third optical sensor is mounted on the rear end of the pen device. The first optical sensor is used to scan a large part of a page, for example. The second optical sensor is used to identify the local content of a document by recognizing a printed mark, for example.
The output of the optical sensors is sent as a sensor signal to the base unit by a transmitter of the pen device. The base unit communicates with the pen device and receives the sensor signal. The base unit can thereby capture the user's document as an electronic document.